German-American Discourse on Politics and Culture

May 30, 2011

Recently there has been a concerted effort by the media in Germany and by key members of the other mainstream political parties to accuse the Left Party in Germany (Die Linke) of anti-Semitism. The campaign has been pick up and reported on by the Jerusalem Post:

Hans-Peter Uhl, from the Bavarian- based Christian Social Union, a sister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, accused the Left Party on Wednesday of “fishing for votes in anti-Semitic voter groups.”

A telling example was the Left Party deputy Inge Höger, who appeared in May at a pro- Hamas conference in Wuppertal, North Rhine-Westphalia, wearing a keffiyeh showing a map labeled “Palestine” on the entire territory of the State of Israel. She spoke about the “misuse of the Holocaust” in silencing criticism of Israel’s “occupation policies.”

Critics of the Left Party received ammunition from Professor Samuel Salzborn of the University of Giessen, who published an article entitiled Die Linkspartei had einen Antisemitismusproblem ("The Left Party has an Anti-Semitism Problem"):

("Officials of the Left Party are openly aligned with terrorist organizations. The party must finally decide between democracy and anti-Semitism.

The Left Party has an anti-Semitism problem which can no longer be ignored. For the number of incidents - which originate from an anti-Semitic worldview - has increased dramatically since the beginning of the year. The pattern is always the same: ostensibly it is couched as criticism of Israel, but the arguments reveal themselves as anti-Semitic io the core.

This can be seen by the participation by two current and one former Left Party representatives from the Bundestag in the Gaza Flotilla and thus with open collaboration with violent Islamists. The fact that Left Party functionaries are cooperating with with radical Islamists, who have never concealed their anti-Semitic motives, is the result of a widespread radicalization of the party.")

I don't doubt that there are anti-Semites in the Left Party, just as there are some in the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the other parties. But I haven't seen any official proclamation from the Left Party attacking Jews. True, the Left Party is more vociferous in its criticism of the Israelis policies than the other parties, but that could be a response to the one-sided support by the conservative CDU/CSU for the right-wing Likud policies of Netanyahu. Here is the official response of the Left Party to the charge of anti-Semitism:

(The position of the Left Party is " that Germany has a special responsibility towards Israel and rejects evey kind of anti-Semitism, racism, oppression and war because of the terrible crimes of Germans against Jews during National Socialism. This responsibility can never be relativized; it includes the efforts to create a Palestinian state and the guarantee of Israel's right to exist. We see a two-fold responsibility and stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine and Israel. A one-sided advocacy in this conflict does not contribute to a resolution.)

No doubt there is a historical aspect to the controversy, as the Left Party's roots are in the former East Germany, which, along with the Soviet Bloc supported Arab states to counter American influence in the region. In any event, the Left Party needs to have a more nuanced position on the conflict and distance itself from Hamas, if its foreign policy to be taken seriously. At the same time, it is unfortunate that the media and CDU in Germany jump on any criticism of Israeli policies in the occupied territories as "anti-Semitism".

May 29, 2011

The writer and "Islam expert" Dr. Udo Ulfkotte has made a nice career for himself in Germany by spreading hate and fear against Muslims. In a recent interview he fantasized about all the "living space" (Lebensraum) ethnic Germans could have if only they could conduct forced deportation of all the Turkish and Arab people living in Germany. No matter that nearly all of Dr. Ulfkotte's hateful diatribes are based on lies: he is a much sought-after guest for TV talk shows and discussion panels.

But even Dr. Ulfkotte may have outdone himself with his most recent piece on the right-wing Truther site of Kopp Verlag (with thanks to Politblogger). Germany is facing a health crisis due to vegetables tainted with E.coli. Naturally, Udo Ulfkotte seizes the opportunity for yet another attack on immigrants from Turkey:

(In the "strawberry region" in Pottenstein (Austria) and on at least ten other strawberry farms workers are required to wear pants because Turkish women who were working there seasonally were urinating on the strawberries and even defecating among the plants....Certain migrants have a completely different concepts of hygiene than we Europeans.)

Dr. Ulfkotte goes on to describe a "fecal Jihad" being waged by Muslims against Europeans.

Thus far, there is zero evidence that the E.coli outbreak has any connection with strawberries, much less strawberries from Austria. Authorities believe rather that cucumbers from Spain may be to blame. But don't look for a retraction or an apology from Dr. Udo Ulfkotte. He has never once retracted any of the numerous lies he's published at Kopp Verlag or elsewhere.

Again, Ulfkotte is free to publish whatever he wishes, even if it's mostly lies. What concerns me is that he is viewed by the German media as an "expert" and frequently appears on German television. They are lending to this fraud credibility he in no way deserves.

("In its business practices the bank deceived its customers, destroyed communities and hurt the American taxpayers", the group said in its counter-motion. This is evidenced by the numerous court actions. The bank's refusal to take responsibility" for its role in the financial crisis has "significantly damaged it reputation.")

But Ackermann would have none of it. The Americans were all wrong, suing the wrong people, the bank is blameless and would never do anything to hurt its reputation:

I've just returned from the ASTD International Conference and Expo where Human Resources executives and training professionals from around the world gather to discuss the latest ideas,techniques and products for optimizing workforce effectiveness and maximizing profitability. One technique that was not featured at the conference was the employee incentive program practiced in Germany known as "sex for performance":

A German insurance company rewarded its 100 best reps by organsing an outdoor orgy at a spa with 20 high class prostitutes.

Organisers even dished out colour coded wrist bands to indicate which services partygoers could enjoy.

The ‘incentive’ trip for the sales reps at Hamburg Mannheimer took place in Budapest in June 2007 and has only just been revealed in the pages of German business bible Handelsblatt.

The company provided extra rewards for those sales reps that exceeded their quota (as well as for the senior execs, naturally):

The ladies wore red and yellow wrist bands. One group were there as hostesses, and the others were to fulfill any and every desire,' said another salesman.

'There were also ladies with white wrist bands. They were reserved for the board and the very best salesmen.'

Unfortunately, the details concerning the special attributes of the "ladies with white wrist bands" were not provided.

Schirow says corporate bashes with prostitutes are commonplace. "Many large firms have an extra budget to fund such parties in such a way that they don't show up in the official accounts," she says. "These days you've got to motivate your staff."

If a company doesn't have money to send its staff on a foreign trip, it might will send them to a brothel or nightclub instead.

"For me, this incident at Hamburg-Mannheimer is totally normal," says Schirow. "The insurance business in particular likes to party and reward its staff with female accompaniment. The only thing that surprised me was the scale of it."

But such illicit parties serve an additional purpose beyond motivation. "One shares a secret and a secret experience, that welds people together and makes them beholden to the company," says Monique.

In addition, it gives men self-confidence. "For the pure sense of pleasure, a man doesn't need a prostitute for sex, he can relieve himself," says Schirow. "It's about the appreciation he feels when a woman shows she likes being with him, that he makes her happy."

But count me as skeptical. I've been around executive teams and sales reps long enough to know that - while sex is fine and dandy - money is the true motivator, much better than sex. These firms would get a better return on investment by redistributing the money spent on high-class prostitutes to performance bonuses.

May 21, 2011

Aryan-looking athletes dispassionately staring into the glorious future, standing before sculptures commemorating past victories of the fatherland; in the background Albert Speer-inspired neo-classical architecture. Something out of Leni Riefenstahl? Actually, these are posters seen in Moscow promoting the 2014 Winter Olympics:

"Without doubt the authors of this advertising were inspired by Nazi art," said Ekaterina Degot, a well-known art historian and former curator at the State Tretyakov Gallery.

When the billboards were put up, the Russian art collective Voina, itself known for its controversial painting of a 65-metre penis on a drawbridge in St Petersburg, tweeted: "On Pushkinskaya Square opposite Gap, there is a huge advertisement, openly fascist in style, for elite housing in Sochi."

Degot and others said the style and pose of the subjects in the images was heavily suggestive of Nazi art which stresses racial purity and superiority.

Somehow this is all very fitting for Putin's Russia. But I have to hand it to the creators - a design firm in St. Petersburg called Doping-Pong. Their cool realism has more in common with Neo Rauch than with the bombast of the Nazis.

May 20, 2011

They are called “Wutbürger.” And they have become the bane of every political party in Germany.

Loosely translated as “enraged citizen,” the Wutbürger has stepped outside the classical political and parliamentary system by organizing demonstrations and town-hall meetings, protest marches and sit-ins.

“It’s as if the post-1945 consensus of Germans accepting the status quo and the conventional structures of the main political parties is coming to an end,” said Andrea Römmele, a professor at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. “These new trends should be seen as a strength, not as a threat to democracy,” she added.

The New York Times lumps all of the recent mass demonstrations in Germany as examples of the Wutbürger "movement". Thus the Stuttgart 21 protests against the rail station, the anti-nuke protests, and the protests in Berlin concerning the airport expansion are all expressions of populist rage that stands outside the established political parties.

“The Wutbürgers are not ideological as such,” she added. “They are educated people who are against a certain style of politics in which the political parties have failed to create a platform for citizens’ discussions.”

The citizen’s sense of alienation from the political parties is reflected in the increasingly low turnout in both federal and regional elections.

“Over the past 20 years or so, you have seen here, but in other European countries too, a trend toward de-politicization,” said Harald Welzer, a political sociologist at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities in Essen. “The citizens feel isolated from the parties.

But the mass protests cited in the article were all supported by the Green Party and play a role in the rise of the Greens to the second largest political party in Germany.

The Wutbürger "discovered" by the NYTimes are separate from the "Bürger in Wut" party, which is a right-wing populist group that is primarily concerned with immigrants in Germany. This group has found new members after Thilo Sarrazin published his best-selling book on the genetic inferiority of Turkish and Arab immigrants. The party has achieved some electoral success in the city-state of Bremen, where they have joined forces with the right-wing nationalist party DVU (now merged with the neo-Nazi NPD).

I have read the Party Platform of the Bürger in Wut ( available here for download - pdf warning), and it is a document of right-wing xenophobia. Much of the Program consists of imposing restrictions on immigrants, on the construction of mosques, and the teaching of the Islam religion in Germany. In particular, the group is especially concerned with who is and who isn't "a German":

(Only descendents of German citizens can be German, or those who achieve citizenship following a successful integration through naturalization.)

Of course, "successful integration" is a 15-year process and it is unclear who determines whether the integration is "successful" or not. The group Bürger in Wut is hypersensitive to being labeled "right-wing populist" and is suing the journalist Alexander Häusler under Germany's ridiculous defamation laws. But one of the biggest supporters of the group is the völkisch nationalist weekly Junge Freiheit, which this week has an adoring interview with Jan Timke, the leader of Bürger in Wut.

The suit says Deutsche Bank broke a number of public nuisance and other laws.

The bank allowed many homes and buildings to deteriorate into boarded-up, graffiti-scrawled, trash-strewn eyesores that have led to increased crime in neighborhoods and contributed to falling home prices, the city alleged.

The lawsuit also contended that Deutsche Bank acquired hundreds of foreclosed properties with tenants who were forced out through "threats, small cash payments and baseless eviction actions" that violated the city's rent stabilization ordinance and federal laws.

Der Spiegel sent a reporter to interview one of Deutsche Bank's tenants - Nancy Rodriguez in South Los Angeles - who describes the appalling conditions in the apartment where she lives with her baby:

("The floor is sinking down, the walls are crumbling and the wood foundation is rotting." The pipes are probably leaking since "there's mold everywhere. One of the neighbors hasn't had any hot water in two years. "The other one's roof is leaking. The rain softened the ceiling until it finally collapsed.")

No doubt Deutsche Bank will settle this lawsuit and pay $$millions in fines. "Peanuts" in the eyes of CEO Josef Ackermann; it will have no affect on his goal of achieving 25% Return on Equity.

Here's a better solution: The CIty of Los Angeles should force Ackermann to leave his villa in Bad Homburg and live in one of his slum apartments for a year. Maybe he would then rethink Deutsche Bank's policy of "profits - no matter what the cost."

Recently I wrote about the American Youth for Western Civilization and its growing ties to anti-Muslim groups in Germany. One leader of the group, Taylor Rose, traveled to Cologne to speak at a march and rally with the "Pro-Bewegung" along with some other well-known European racists such as Susanne Winter from the fascist FPÖ in Austria. The march was supposed to ba a "huge demonstration" of "thousands" of freedom-loving patriots from across Europe.

(The announcement hat little to do with the reality of the situation. Just about 300 people took part in the protest march. The demonstration wound up at the Haymarket in Cologne due to a 2-hour delay. A large contingent of right-wingers had difficulty making to the assembly area. Left-wing counter demonstrators blocked the rail track in neighboring Leverkusen.)

One of the counter-demonstrators was Elfi Scho-Antwerpes, Cologne's mayor, who told reporters:

(We don't want racism in Cologne - rather freedom, democracy and respect. For we are a city of many colors - not brown.)

Of course, that doesn't stop young Taylor Rose of the YWC from declaring the event a huge success. Back on the campus of Liberty University, where the students kneel before images of Jesus and Ronald Reagan and are taught in Biology 101 that Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs, Rose wrote the following:

The day was marked well as a success for the European and American political right-wing. For the face of European politics is changing, to now, where in the European mainstream, the forward thinking ideas of European conservatism are in the main stream discussion. This is not too far separated from America, where the media and political pundits must consider the Tea Party in their political analysis.

Thousands of Europeans, are no longer satisfied with the at best, centrist approach of the main stream parties. The failure of socialism in almost every form is evident across Europe. For the first time now, there are Germans en mass that are no longer afraid to declare their German patriotism publically.

Sorry Taylor, you and your sorry band of racists are simply delusional. Everyone who actually witnessed the event said it was a pathetic failure.

May 11, 2011

Polls in the US show that support for the Tea Party movement is dropping fast. The Tea Party represents the worst of America: hate, bigotry, and crude misinformation. The final straw for many Americans was the Tea Party-inspired Republican budget plan that called for the phase-out of Medicare - one of the most successful and popular government programs ever.

In Germany the Tea Party still has its admirers. One of the biggest cheerleaders for Tea Party tactics and policies in Germany is the American radio announcer Heather De Lisle. On her blog and in her book Amiland she attacks President Obama and the Democrats and extolls the virtues of the Tea Party.

Last week in Berlin she attended a forum for right-wing activists in the CDU where she urged the 150 hard-core activists to adopt Tea Party methods:

(The spokesman for the initiative, Michael Nickel, sees as the model the conservative American "Tea Party" movement, associated with the Republicans. The American journalist and Tea Party expert Heather DeLisle added her advice. DeLisle stressed that the Tea Party employs clever martketing techniques. Conservatie organizations in Germany need to be more dynamic and deliver a crisp message if they want to elevate their image.)

Also present at the forum was the disgraced former CDU politician Martin Hohmann, who was forced from office after making anti-Semitic remarks. His presence also points to some nice parallels with the American Tea Party.

May 08, 2011

Who can explain the mysteries of human attraction? That question is at the heart of the Swiss writer Peter Stamm's 2009 novel Sieben Jahre. An English version - Seven Years - translated by Michael Hofmann, was recently published.

Alexander is an attractive and successful Munich architect married to the stunningly beautiful and highly creative Sonja - also an architect. They are the perfect couple - or seem to be. Alex, however, is missing something, and develops a relationship with the plain, rather simple-minded Polish girl Iwona. Iwona is the exact opposite of Alexander: a devout Catholic, utterly devoid of guile or irony, a lover of kitsch. But she in some ways seems more real to Alex than than does his wife, who, like the LeCorbusier buildings she admires, is somewhat distant and sterile. Alex takes sadistic pleasure in tormenting Iwona for her total devotion and love for him. At the same time, he envies her for the depth of her feeling - something he is incapable of.

(It wasn't lust that tied me to her, it was a feeling that I hadn't had since my childhood, a mixture of emotional security and freedom. It felt like time stood still when I was with her, but that made these moments meaningful.)

There is also an interesting sociological component to the relationship that Peter Stamm never really explores. Like Iwona, Alex comes from a humble, lower-middle class background, and he doesn't feel like he belongs in the sophisticated, wealthy society of Sonja. WIth Iwona he doesn't have to pretend. But that doesn't stop him from looking down on Iwona for her appalling taste, even as he feels nothing but contempt for the pretentiousness of Sonja's affluent and sophisticated familiy. Alexander is too much of a coward to accept the love of either woman.

Sieben Jahre is in many ways an utterly conventional novel, narrated by the narcissist Alexander in simple, short - almost dull - sentences. But, inexplicably, like Alex's attraction to Iwona, it is nearly impossible to resist.